Discussion and questions about Cumulus weather station software version 1. This section and its subforums are the main place to get help with Cumulus. Anything which is not specific to the type of weather station goes in here; for anything specific to a type of weather station, please use the appropriate subforum. Use the 'website development' section for any questions relating to creating or running a web site for Cumulus data. Discussion of the stations themselves in these sections is fine.

I am happy with flat files as you can import them into SQL fairly easily, but if you offer SQL as an option, then Cumulus should be able to use either a local OR remote database - maybe using a flat file as well, then it can buffer data if the remote db is unavailable

I considered a 'none of the above' option, but didn't want it getting out of hand. I was thinking that if it did have local SQL support, then there might be an option to maintain a remote database as well. But if that remote database was MySQL, we get into expensive licensing issues, unless the client was open source.

I'm blind when it comes to databases and benefits so I think the plain data is fine, but well, if you could maintain the database remotely, you could always suffer a hardware failure and keep your data safe.

I voted for both options as eventually I would like to store data in a database for the power it gives the user. But those who don't wish to go down that route should not need to change hence the option to retain the existing system.

I think ideally we would have a configuration choice of flat files or a database. Those of us that are sophisticated to want a database should also be able to extract the data from it as we require. However not sure if it would be easier from your PoV to do either flat files, or flat files plus a database so you only need one mechanism for generating the output from the saved data.

I can see the potential benefit in storing in SQL, however the simple text also provides useful access at times, even if via a spreadsheet.

My main concern in opting for both is whether that would place higher demand on the system, unless there could be an option to disable the SQL. My current setup relies on an old laptop running 24/7 as a dedicated "server", also servicing a USB Webcam (using Yawcam) that uploads via FTP every 10 minutes.

This old laptop usefully takes little power (15 watts on power meter, if I recall correctly), is 597MHZ Celeron with 512MB (max allowed!) running WinXPSP3 Pro (local maintenance via Remote Desktop). TaskManager indicates about 50 - 70% CPU load rising to 100% briefly when Cumulus or Webcam uploads (I try to set them interleaved!) and less than 300MB PF usage.
So, would a SQL or even both version require greater CPU or RAM?